Mega Man

"A memorable challenge for the more patient gamers."

Few icons of classic gaming in the 90s managed to hold their place in the sun alongside their heavyweight contemporaries Mario and Sonic. One of the few who soared to the top of the ladder and vied for it's share of fame during the rising popularity of the NES was Capom's Mega Man.

In Mega Man's 1987 debut, you assume the role of a human-like robot aptly named "Mega Man" designed by master robot designer Dr. Thomas Light and his assistant Dr. Wily in the vague year of 200X.

After the runaway success of their creation of a robot called Proto Man, Light continued his work by assembling six more robots for assistance with "industrial purposes". It was then after the creation of those six that Dr. Light created two housekeeping robots: Rock (Mega Man) and Roll.

Dr. Wily, letting the greed and envy get to him, stole their prototype robot Proto Man. After lengthy studying of Proto Man's inner workings, Wily broke into the lab and reprogrammed the robots with exception to Rock and Roll in which he evidently couldn't figure out. With this, Dr. Wily set his stolen robots on a rampage in attempt to conquer the city.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the housekeeping robot Mega man stepped up to be made into a combat-ready robot to battle the stolen robots and Dr. Wily in an effort to restore the peace.

Gameplay

Mega Man is a game that is set up very simply: You have six stages to clear, and you can choose any order in which you decide to complete them. At the end of each stage lies one of the stolen robots from Dr. Light's lab, which must be defeated in order to progress. In the event of defeating a stage boss, you are awarded an ammo-based secondary weapon that takes the characteristics of the robot you acquired it from. For example, when you defeat Ice Man, you are able to access a weapon that fires a shard of ice, and defeating Elec Man allows you to fire electricity in a 3-way shot.

The special weapons you receive from clearing levels play a detrimental role to your success in your quest to complete this game. Each boss has a weakness to a particular weapon, and if you do not possess the right weapon for the job you're up the creek without a paddle. Having the boss's weakness is heavily enforced in Mega Man, which usually sends you on a tour of the game trying to find out which boss you can clear the easiest with your default weapon, then taking another tour trying to identify which boss is weak to the weapon you just acquired. While some bosses weaknesses are obvious to anyone with common sense and a basic understanding of nature, others aren't that obvious and require dying your way though levels and dying more at the end in the process of deducing what boss is weak to what weapon. This in turn becomes tiresome and often frustrating due to the game's harsh difficulty.

While the majority of the special weapons you acquire in the game are practically useless, some do offer effectual replacements for your standard weapon. For example, Cut Man and Ice Man's weapons are both very useful for fighting your way through levels, and Bomb Man and Guts Man's weapons are especially useless and serve no reliable purpose other than attacking bosses with their weaknesses and obtaining one “hidden” required item.

A running score is kept throughout the game, and displayed top-center on the game screen; defeating enemies, and taking down the robot masters earn points. At the end of each level, your score is tallied up and additional points are awarded per amount of what I call “point pellets” that you accumulate over your progress through the level; these pellets are dropped by normal enemies scattered across each level. Your points will continue to build until you run out of lives, and when you choose to continue your score counter is reset to zero. This serves as a small incentive to stay alive, though that is all it seems to do since scores are not saved in any way—Mega Man has no scoreboard feature or high-score display.

Mega Man controls very well; you do not have the obscene amount of control over him that you will in the series later installments, but what you can do in this game is more than sufficient to not have any issues with the controls. One minor complaint about how Mega Man controls is that you have a small bit of slide when you stop moving, as if every pathway is lined with a thin sheet of ice. This can lead to slipping off platforms if you aren't careful, and also lead to throwing your jumps off. While you should not come across any issues in the game's control, the real issues of the game lies in its unforgiving difficulty.

This game does not, and will not forgive the slightest of mistakes. You will die many, many times in this game. Mega Man is not an easy game by any stretch; the beginning of Guts Man's stage features a series of platforms you must traverse over a pit, come extremely close to landing on one, and you'll miss the mark. And when you're actually on one, there are sections of the rails they travel on that are missing the track, and when it gets to a point like this, the platform drops out from under you. You must compensate for this by jumping and hovering over the platform long enough for it to clear the gap and set upright again for you to land on, or face the penalties. If you play smart and don't rush your way through the levels, you should not have much of a problem with this game, as the difficulty seems to punish those who try to rush their way through. Though Mega Man is a difficult game, it is much more challenging than frustrating, if you take your time and play smart it is not that bad at all, just a solid challenge—And a good one at that.

Another example of how the game's difficulty is directly tied to the level design is the Ice Man stage. This level features a stretch of maneuvering over a pit of nothingness while on floating platforms that can damage you while dodging the constant threat of other platforms pelting you and enemies flying towards you. Another big contribution to Mega Man's harsh difficulty is that touching spikes in any manner is an instant kill regardless of whether you have recently been hit and in invincible recovery mode or not.

You have just a few chances to clear any given level, and if you fail to defeat the boss at the end of the stage no matter how far you got with your three lives, you can choose to either continue the stage from the very beginning or go back to the level selection menu and try your luck elsewhere. With several stages, you're going to burn through a few continues (Which are infinite) on your first few play-throughs until you get it down pat.

Later on in the game, you will face a difficult shape-shifting monster and two marathon battles, one of which is tied into the final battle meaning that not only do you have to complete the marathon in one piece, you also have to make it through with enough spare lives and special weapon ammunition to take out the final boss. Finishing this game is a feat that takes patience, skill and the ability to remain calm in the many moments of frustration you are likely to encounter.

Audio / Visual

This game only looks good if you play it with an understanding that this was created somewhere between '85-'86 and released in '87. Everything looks like it should though, and for what it is, it looks great for the times. Ice and fire are portrayed properly, no problems here with how things look. Mildly-detailed enemies are in surplus, and although nothing will make you say “wow” you'll find that the look of everything is always well done, appropriate and belonging.

In the audio department, the game sounds great. Every tune is well played to the theme of the levels, and do well to create the vibe without ever being distracting. Particular tunes that stand out are Ice Man's theme and Guts Man's theme. Everything else is debatably forgettable. Capcom knows how to rock that NES sound chip, but the music in Mega Man is collectively lacking in liveliness and presence—Yeah, its there, but it's nothing special.

Replay Value

As tough as Mega Man is, once you finally overcome the challenges and complete the game, you will be compelled to start over and play through the game again with all the acquired skill and knowledge of the game, which lowers the high difficulty a small bit, and you're sure to improve on tough sections on your second round through. After the second time though, I found myself unwilling to subject myself to dealing with it all over again despite my want to pick it up again for another run-through. Mega Man is a very fun game, but it's a different story when you consider dealing with the high difficulty to enjoy it.

In closing

Mega Man is a very fun and challenging game, and once you can adjust to the unforgiving level of difficulty of this game you will find that it is one of the best platforming experiences that the NES offers. To save yourself lots of frustration with this game, find yourself a list of recommended level routes or a list of each boss and their weakness to keep yourself from giving up on this game. Without a pointer in the right direction for you to head in, you'll find it easy to get overwhelmed by the difficulty and the enforcement of using bosses weaknesses against them. As I stated earlier, if you play smart and don't rush your way through the levels, you should not have much of a problem with this game, as the difficulty seems to punish those who try to rush. Over all, Mega Man is a game that is wonderful and enjoyable, a challenging game that force you to play smart and think before you act. You probably won't love this game, but you'll definitely either enjoy it or hate it to varying degrees. This is a great start to a great series, any 8-bit fan needs to give this game a play and learn to appreciate it for what it is and what it brought to the 2D platformer genre.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/14/07

Game Release: Mega Man (US, December 1987)